A Hybrid Perpetual Rose
An effectual and preferable method now employed for destroying the aphis is to fumigate with the vapor arising from a pan containing a gallon of water and a pint of strong extract of tobacco. To generate the vapor, a piece of red-hot iron is dropped into the pan. From one to three or four pans are required to a house, according to its size. For the red spider, the chief means of control is syringing with either clear or soapy water. If the plants are intelligently ventilated and given, at all times, as much fresh air as possible, the red spider is less likely to appear. For mildew, which is easily recognized by its white, powdery appearance on the foliage, accompanied with more or less distortion of the leaves, the remedy is sulfur in some form or other. The flowers of sulfur may be dusted thinly over the foliage; enough merely to slightly whiten the foliage is sufficient. It may be dusted on from the hand in a broadcast way, or applied with a powder-bellows, which is a better and less wasteful method. Again, a paint composed of sulfur and linseed oil may be applied to a portion of one of the steam or hot-water heating pipes. The fumes arising from this are not agreeable to breathe, but fatal to mildew. Again, a little sulfur may be sprinkled here and there on the cooler parts of the greenhouse flue. Under no circumstances, however, ignite any sulfur in a greenhouse. The vapor of burning sulfur is death to plants.
Propagation.—The writer has known women who could root Roses with the greatest ease. They would simply break off a branch of the Rose, insert it in the flower-bed, cover it with a bell-jar, and in a few weeks they would have a strong plant. Again they would resort to layering; in which case a branch, notched half way through on the lower side, was bent to the ground and pegged down so that the notched portion was covered with a few inches of soil. The layered spot was watered from time to time. After three or four weeks roots were sent forth from the notch and the branch or buds began to grow, when it was known that the layer had formed roots.
Vase of Roses
Several years ago a friend took a cheese-box, filled it with sharp sand to the brim, supported it in a tub of water so that the lower half inch of the box was immersed. The sand was packed down, sprinkled, and single-joint Rose cuttings, with a bud and a leaf near the top, were inserted almost their whole length in the sand. This was in July, a hot month, when it is usually difficult to root any kind of cutting; moreover, the box stood on a southern slope, facing the hot sun, without a particle of shade. The only attention given the box was to keep the water high enough in the tub to touch the bottom of the cheese-box. In about three weeks he took out three or four dozen of as nicely rooted cuttings as could have been grown in the greenhouse.
The “saucer system,” in which cuttings are inserted in wet sand contained in a saucer an inch or two deep, to be exposed at all times to the full sunshine, is of a similar nature. The essentials are, to give the cuttings the “full sun” and to keep the sand saturated with water.
Whatever method is used, if cuttings are to be transplanted after rooting, it is important to pot them off in small pots as soon as they have a cluster of roots one-half inch or an inch long. Leaving them too long in the sand weakens the cutting.
Sage is a perennial, but best results are secured by resowing every two or three years. Give a warm, rich soil. Hardy.